“What I see? Families. Animals who live in harmony, peacefully.”
“You must also see apes, creatures who are like us.”
“Sorry, I only see primates.”
“But we are primates! Chimpanzees are closer to us genetically than they are to gorillas. It’s not just that we have similar DNA: a full ninety-eight percent of our DNA is chimpanzee DNA.”
Sharko thought about the remark for a few seconds.
“That’s a provocative image. When you look at it that way . . .”
“There’s nothing provocative about it, it’s just the facts. Now, suppose someone took away your ability to speak and put you naked in a cage. You’d be taken for what you are: the third chimpanzee, next to the pygmy chimpanzee and the common African chimpanzee. A chimpanzee almost lacking in fur and who walks erect. The only difference is that none of your cousins knowingly destroys his environment. Our evolutionary advantages, like language and intelligence, our ability to colonize the entire planet, also have a cost in Darwinian currency: we are the animals who can spread the greatest misery. But evolution ‘judged’ that these drawbacks were smaller than the benefits gained. For now . . .”
Her voice betrayed both conviction and resignation. She gripped the wooden sill that encircled the belvedere.
“Do you have children, Inspector?”
Sharko nodded, lips pressed tight.
“I had a little girl. Her name was Eloise.”
There was a long silence. Everyone knows what it means to talk about a child in the past tense. Sharko looked at the monkeys one last time, took a deep breath, then finally said, “I’ll do everything in my power to find out what happened. I promise you that.”
5
Floored by her captain’s announcement, Lucie dropped her sugar cube on the kitchen table. She joined both hands over the bridge of her nose and took long breaths.
“Carnot, dead. I can’t believe it. How did it happen?”
“He ripped open an artery in his throat with his bare hands.”
“He committed suicide? Why?”
Kashmareck didn’t touch his coffee. There was nothing pleasant about delivering this kind of news, but Lucie would have heard sooner or later and he preferred it be from his own lips rather than by phone.
“He had become extremely violent.”
“That I know.”
“It was more than that toward the end. He attacked anyone who came near and almost beat another inmate to death in the exercise yard. Carnot was no stranger to solitary. He was the bane of the guards’ existence. Except that this time, they found him lying in his own blood. It must have taken a . . . an incredible amount of willpower to do something like that.”
Lucie stood up and went to look out the window, arms folded as if she were cold. The boulevard, the people walking around carefree.
“When? When did it happen?”
“Two days ago.”
A long silence followed those words. The news had been so brutal that Lucie felt wrapped in a gray fog.
“I don’t know if I should feel relieved or not. I wanted so much for him to suffer. Every hour of every day. For him to fully realize the pain he caused.”
“Guys like that don’t work the same as you or me, Lucie, you know that better than anyone.”
Oh, yes, she knew that. She had studied them so closely in the past. The sociopaths, the serial killers, the vile refuse who stood way outside the norm. She remembered the days when she was just a police sergeant back in Dunkirk, when she would listen to the waves slapping against the pleasure boats across from her office. The newborn twins babbling in their crib. Days spent dealing with paperwork, when the term “psychopath” was merely an abstraction. The idle hours she spent absorbing books about scum like Carnot. If she had known . . . if only she’d known that the most abject evil can strike anywhere, at any time.
She returned to the table and took a tiny sip of coffee. The black surface was rippling from the way her hand shook. Little by little, talking with her captain was helping loosen the knot in her throat.
“Every night I’ve tried to imagine how that piece of garbage was spending his days in prison. I imagined him walking, talking, even laughing with the others. I pictured him maybe telling someone how he had stolen my Clara from me, and how he nearly stole Juliette. Each day, I told myself it was a miracle they found Juliette alive, after thirteen days locked up in that room . . .”
The police captain read such tenderness in Lucie’s eyes that he didn’t dare interrupt. She kept talking, as if her words had remained buried far too long in the depths of her heart.
“The moment I shut my eyelids, I saw Carnot’s beady little black eyes, the wretched hair plastered over his forehead, his huge body . . . You can’t imagine how much time his face spent spinning around in my head. All those days, all those nights, when I could practically feel his breath down my neck. You can’t imagine the hell I went through, from the moment they identified the body of one of my girls to when they found the other one alive. Seven days of hell, seven days when I didn’t know if it was Clara or Juliette. Seven days when I imagined everything possible, and they shot me full of medications to keep me going and . . . to keep me from going crazy.”
“Lucie . . .”
“And she was alive. Dear God, my precious little Juliette was alive when I went into Carnot’s house with the other cops. It was so . . . unhoped for, so extraordinary. I was so happy, even though my other daughter had been found burned beyond recognition only a week earlier. Happy, even though the worst possible tragedy had punched me in the face . . .”
Lucie slammed her fist on the table; her fingers clenched the tablecloth.
“Sixteen stab wounds, Captain! He killed Clara in his car just a hundred yards from the beach, stabbed her sixteen times in some kind of violent frenzy, and then he calmly drove for sixty miles before dropping her in the forest. He poured gasoline on her, lit it, spent long minutes watching while Juliette was screaming in the trunk. Then he headed off again, shut the surviving twin up in his house, didn’t touch her, gave her food and water. As if nothing had happened. When they arrested him at his home, there was still blood on the steering wheel. He hadn’t even bothered washing it off. Why? What caused all that?”
Lucie was stirring the spoon around her cup, even though the sugar was still on the table.
“Now that he’s dead, he’s deprived me of the most important thing: answers. Just some goddamn answers.”
Kashmareck was hesitant about pursuing the conversation. He should never have come here and revived this horror. But since she was staring at him intently, waiting for his reaction, he replied:
“You never would have got any. That kind of behavior is inexplicable, it’s not even human. One thing for certain is that Carnot hadn’t really been in his right mind for the past year, and apparently it was getting worse. His bouts of violence were totally unpredictable. According to the prison shrink, Carnot could be gentle as a lamb, and the next second he’d go for your throat.”
The captain sighed, and seemed to be weighing each word.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I know you’d find out sooner or later. The shrink had requested a psychiatric reevaluation, because his patient’s behavior had so many earmarks of mental defect.”
He saw Lucie react; she was on the verge of a breakdown. He grabbed her wrist and held it against the table.
“Between you and me, it’s a good thing that piece of shit is dead. It’s a good thing, Lucie.”
Lucie shook her head. She jerked her hand away from the captain’s grasp.
“Mental defect? What do you mean, mental defect? What kind?”
Kashmareck reached into the inner pocket of his light jacket, taking out a packet of photos that he set on the table.
“This kind.”
Lucie picked
up the photos and studied them. She squinted.
“What is this nonsense?”
“It’s something he drew on a wall of his cell, with colored markers he borrowed from the prison art room.”
The photo showed a magnificent landscape: sun setting in the water, radiant boulders, birds in the sky, sailboats.
But the drawing, which began about a yard off the floor, had been done upside down.
Lucie turned the photo in all directions. The police captain took a large swallow of coffee. The taste stuck in his throat.
“Weird, isn’t it? It’s as if Carnot had hung himself from the ceiling like a bat and started to draw. Apparently he’d begun making drawings like this since shortly before he landed in jail.”
“Why did he draw upside down?”
“He didn’t just draw upside down. He also said he saw the world upside down, more and more often. According to him, it lasted for a few minutes, sometimes more, as if he’d put on special glasses that flopped images from the real world. When that happened, he’d lose his balance and often keel over.”
“Pure ravings . . .”
“You said it. His psychiatrist naturally thought they might be hallucinations. Perhaps even . . .”
“Schizophrenia?”
The captain nodded.
“Carnot was twenty-three. It’s not uncommon for psychiatric illnesses to become manifest or be developed in prison, especially around that age.”
Lucie let the photos fall from her hands. They scattered over the tabletop.
“Are you telling me he might have had a mental disease?”
She squeezed her lips tight, clenched her fists. Her entire body felt like screaming.
“I refuse to let the cause of my child’s death be pushed off on some miserable shrink’s suppositions. Carnot was responsible for his actions. He knew what he was doing.”
Kashmareck nodded without conviction.
“I agree. That’s why he was judged guilty and ended his life in prison.”
He could tell she was stunned, overwhelmed, even though she was trying her best to dominate her feelings.
“It’s over, Lucie. Crazy or not, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t go any farther than this. Tomorrow Carnot will be buried.”
“It doesn’t matter? Is that what you think? On the contrary, Captain, nothing could matter more.”
Lucie stood up again and began pacing across the room.
“Grégory Carnot ripped the life from my little girl. If . . . if even the slightest hint of hidden madness had anything to do with that, I want to know.”
“It’s too late.”
“That psychiatrist—what is his name?”
The police captain looked at his watch, finished his coffee in one gulp, and stood up.
“I won’t keep you any longer. And besides, I have to get to work.”
“His name, Captain!”
The cop heaved a sigh. Shouldn’t he have expected this? During the several years they had worked together, Lucie had never backed away from anything. Deep down inside, buried somewhere in her brain, she must still have retained the purest predatory instincts.
“Dr. Duvette.”
“Get me a visitor’s pass there. For tomorrow.”
Kashmareck clenched his jaws, then nodded limply.
“I’ll do my best, if it’ll help you see things straight and set your mind at ease. But you be careful, all right?”
Lucie nodded, her face expressionless, now devoid of feelings. Kashmareck knew that expression so well on the ex-cop’s face that it made him shiver.
“I promise.”
“And don’t hesitate to come by the squad room whenever you like. We’d all be very happy to see you.”
Lucie smiled politely.
“I’m sorry, Captain. I have to keep all that far away from me from now on. But tell everyone hello for me, and let them know that . . . that I’m okay.”
He nodded and moved to gather his photos, but Lucie snatched them up.
“I’m keeping these, if you don’t mind. I’m going to burn them. It’s a way of telling myself that all this is almost over. And . . . thank you, Captain.”
He looked at her as he would look at a close friend.
“Romuald. I think we’re at the point where you can call me Romuald.”
She accompanied him to the door. Just before leaving, he added:
“If someday you ever want to come back, the door is always open.”
“Good-bye, Captain.”
She closed the door behind him, resting her hand on the knob for a long time.
Back in the kitchen, she used a chair to climb up next to a cabinet and ran her hand over the top. Hidden there were a brown envelope, a Zippo lighter, and a 6.35-mm Mann semiautomatic pistol. A collector’s firearm, in perfect working order. She didn’t touch it but grabbed up the rest.
In the envelope were two recent photos of Carnot. Front and profile. The brute had a slightly flattened nose, bulging forehead, and eyes sunken in their sockets. Six-foot-five, an ominous face, and the build of a giant.
He ripped open an artery in his throat with his bare hands. The words were still echoing in Lucie’s head. She could perfectly well imagine the horror of the scene, in the depths of the solitary wing. The young colossus lying in his hot, black blood, hands still clutching his neck . . . Did madness really have something to do with all this? What kind of frenzy had seized Carnot that it could drive him to mutilate himself so drastically?
Looking at the photos, Lucie felt only bitterness. Since Clara’s death, she couldn’t see Carnot as a human being, even if, for some incomprehensible reason, he had spared Juliette. For her, he was nothing but a mistake of nature, a parasite whose only purpose in life had been to cause harm. And try as they might to come up with some sort of explanation, to pass this off as sadism, perversion, uncontrolled impulse, when you got down to it there was no satisfactory answer. Grégory Carnot was different from the rest of the world. Clara and Juliette had had the misfortune to cross his path at that particular moment, the way some people get bitten by a disease-carrying mosquito as they leave the airport. Chance, coincidence. But not madness. No, not madness . . .
The photos of Carnot had already been ripped up and taped together again, several times over. Lucie placed them in the sink, along with the ones showing the upside-down drawings.
“Yes. It’s a good thing you’re dead. Go burn in hell with all your sins. You are completely responsible for your actions, and you are going to pay.”
She turned the flint on her lighter.
The flame devoured Carnot’s face first of all.
Lucie felt no satisfaction or relief.
At most, the vague sensation of spreading ointment on a third-degree burn.
6
Checking in at Quai de la Rapée is a required step in any criminal investigation assigned to the sleuths of 36 Quai des Orfèvres. The cops rarely go there to admire the Seine and the barges: the sights they see are much less picturesque.
Arms folded, Sharko stood between two autopsy tables in one of the large rooms of the Paris forensic institute. Around him were solid walls, endless corridors, and neon lights giving off late autumn hues. Not to mention an odor of dead game that, over time, impregnated even your chest hairs. Levallois was leaning against a wall just behind the inspector, looking a bit pale: before going in, he’d confessed that autopsies weren’t really his thing. The opposite would have been worrisome.
Paul Chénaix, the medical examiner, had seen some weird stuff in his day, but this was the first time he’d had a chimpanzee on his table. The unconscious animal was lying on its back, arms and legs splayed. Its huge fingers were slightly bent, as if clutching an invisible apple. To the right, the nude body of Eva Louts was devoured by the interrogating light of the scialytic lamp, the s
ame kind they used in operating theaters, which had the peculiar property of creating no shadows.
Sharko rubbed his chin without a word, impressed by the sight of the two inert bodies lying side by side, in more or less identical positions, and showing distinct morphological similarities. Ninety-eight percent of our DNA is chimpanzee DNA, the primatologist had said.
Just as the two cops arrived, Chénaix had been finishing the external examination of the human subject. Her skull had been shaved, very clearly revealing a fracture and a large hematoma at the occipital level. Rudely splayed on the steel surface, poor Eva Louts had lost the little bit of humanity left to her.
“It’s anything but an accident. If you don’t mind my horning in on your territory, Cheetah here had nothing to do with it.”
First good news of the day. Clémentine Jaspar would get back her chimpanzee, her “baby,” safe and sound. On the other hand, it meant there had indeed been a murder, announcing what looked to be a diabolical case.
“Cause of death was the blow to the skull. The victim was probably struck, and blood loss from the scalp wound did the rest. Death occurred between eight p.m. and midnight. Lividity on the shoulder blades and around the buttocks suggests the body was not moved postmortem. As for the bite, hard to tell if it was made before or after death.”
In fifteen years, Chénaix had carved up several tons of cold meat. Neatly trimmed goatee, small round glasses, tough exterior: in his white lab coat, he could easily have been mistaken for a university professor, especially since his knowledge of various spheres of medicine was staggering. The man was a fount of science and had an answer for everything. He and Sharko knew each other well.
In silence, the inspector walked around the table, studying the victim from every angle. After the first contact, which was always hard, he now saw not the body of a nude woman but an investigatory landscape, from which clues jutted like little flags to be plucked.
“Did they show you the paperweight?”
“Yes—it matches.”
“And why rule out the monkey right off the bat? There’s still the bite mark. And just before coming here, we learned it had handled the paperweight. Couldn’t it have picked it up and hit her?”
Bred to Kill Page 5
